Key To Success: Never Look Back Quick Starts Can Make Teams Contenders Right Off The Bat

April 7, 1986|By Russ White of The Sentinel Staff

It's Opening Day 1986, and time for the chase to begin. Time for each of the 26 major-league baseball managers to scheme for a jack rabbit start. ''I want to win every game I can in April,'' Cincinnati Reds Manager Pete Rose says. ''Let everyone chase us.''

Rose is well aware of what a big start can do for a team.

Three of the best starts in baseball history have been accomplished in the past five seasons -- by the 1981 Oakland A's, the 1982 Atlanta Braves and the 1984 Detroit Tigers.

And, each of these clubs went on to win a divisional title or a pennant:

Billy Martin's 1981 A's set an American League record (at the time the major-league record) with an 11-0 start.

Joe Torre's 1982 Braves set a National League and major- league record with a 13-0 getaway.

Sparky Anderson's 1984 world champion Tigers jumped off to 9-0, pushing on to 18-2, 26-4, and 35-5 -- all records after 20, 30 and 40 games.

''There isn't a better way to win a pennant than get off in a hurry,'' Rose said at Orlando's Tinker Field this spring. ''A game in April is as big as one in September, as far as I'm concerned.

''I played for Sparky Anderson in 1970, when we won 70 of our first 100 games,'' Rose said. ''That's 40 over .500 for the first hundred. Beautiful. Just beautiful. Do you know what that means to a manager and his players.

''Hey, when you're up like that, it means you have got just about everybody playing well. It means you can rest a guy here and there and get even another guy going good. It means fun in the clubhouse. Everyone has enthusiasm. There are no dog days. You just can't wait everyday to get to the ballpark.

''Sparky managed that 1970 club of course. And two years ago there was Sparky again with the Tigers coming out like gangbusters. Tell me he isn't some sort of genius. Only this time he got that team to 69-30 and didn't win the 100th game like we did for him in 1970. But I guess he didn't complain. The Tigers won everything in sight before it was over.''

Martin's A's of 1981 were the fourth team in modern history to win as many as 10 in a row to start the season. The 1955 Brooklyn Dodgers, in Walt Alston's second year as manager, jumped off 10-0 and became World Series champions for the first time. Danny Murtaugh's 1962 Pittsburgh Pirates went 10-0 but wound up fourth with a 93-68 record. Birdie Tebbetts got his 1966 Cleveland Indians off to a 10-0 start but wasn't even around at the end of the year as the club finished at 81-81 under George Strickland.

''I hate to differ with Pete Rose's theory about a quick start,'' Baltimore Orioles Manager Earl Weaver said last week, ''but I still like winning in September better than in April. Sometimes a team can get too complacent if it wins too easily at the start.

''And I don't know about resting guys very much. Who wants to have a hot hitter sitting down just to get a cold one in the game. Sure, it's nice to win, nice to have everyone chasing you, but it doesn't necessarily guarantee you'll win the pennant. The season lasts a lot longer than one month.''

As a matter of fact the Orioles used to have a lot of ragged starts for Weaver, but he still managed to come up with five 100-plus-victory seasons. ''We were 109-53 in 1969,'' Weaver said. ''That's 56 games over .500, and I don't remember us winning a slew of games in April. We simply didn't lose in September.''

Weaver's record for regular-season play in September and October is 301-181, a remarkable .624 percentage -- 33 percentage points higher than Weaver's fine overall mark of .591 (1,407 victories, 971 defeats). Weaver's teams are 281-171 for September, 20-10 for October.

''Everything you do from spring training on is designed to get you to the World Series,'' Weaver said. ''More often than not you have a race down to the wire, and that's when my teams always seemed to have an edge. By September I had settled on my players and had their roles well-defined.''

Weaver did make one admission about April: ''I sure don't want to lose 10-0 or 11-0 on opening day. No way. I'll get embarrassed somewhere along the way in a 162-game schedule, but I sure hope opening day won't be such an occasion. If we lose on opening day, so be it, but I want it to be 15-14. At least I can brag about our hitting.''

Weaver wasn't Baltimore's manager when it opened the 1985 season. Joe Altobelli, who won a pennant two years earlier, was. And things looked fine for his 1985 team as it won 18 of the first 27 games. But the Orioles slumped, and Weaver was called back to town to replace Altobelli.

Former manager and now broadcaster Joe Torre obviously has some yarns to tell about his 1982 Braves, baseball's best jack rabbit team, winners of their first 13 games, telecast to millions over Ted Turner's WTBS SuperStation, the real beginning of America's Team.

Torre orchestrated the 13-0 start by making dandy decisions. Consider these facts: